Raise the Hammer

Comment 115417

I keep hearing people locally who KEEP insisting on 1-way streets for Main.

How do we make Main Street safer, as a possible future bike route, for the LRT era?

The only way I can tolerate Main 1-way is if it is something approximately similar to this:

Cars: 1-way (2 lanes)

Bikes: 2-way

Sidewalks widened from 1.5m to 2.0m

Protected cycle track

Lots of buffer between motorists and non-motorists

Cutout parking between the trees.

I still prefer a Main 2-way conversion, but I acknowledge there are wonderful 1-way streets and terrible 2-way streets.

We must, in honesty, at least acknowledge that tamed-down 1-way streets do exist, but they are often incredibly expensive conversions that may currently be beyond Hamilton's budget. A safe 2-way conversion is much more inexpensive.

Spending hours StreetMixing Main Street, I honestly do have mixed feelings about keeping our sidewalks only 1.5 meters wide with a 4-lane Main 2-way and simple painted lines for bike lanes. There's no easy way to get a protected cycle track AND curb bumpout parking, while keeping Main 2-way unless we reduce traffic lanes to 1 lanes per direction (which is probably something that's at least 1 generation from now). So we need an interim taming of Main Street, given the long generational adjustment periods involved. Alas, a honest discussion on /exactly/ how we convert Main to a Complete Stroad is needed.

In this situation (2 lanes per direction), there's no easy room to give protection to bikes. This may be marginally safer than the status quo but I'm left wondering. If we add curbed bumpouts, we reduce traffic lanes per direction to only 1 lane. This may be too difficult a transition for #HamOnt to bite off, given the Hamilton being used to 5 lanes and suddenly narrowing it to 1 lane per direction. Can we sell that to the rest of the city? It sounds difficult;

We need a kick-ass 2-way plan, or as a compromise, a really REALLY REALLY kick-ass (Amsterdam-league) 1-way plan. And soon.